“This is it?” he asks, clipped and urgent.
I nod, breathless as I confirm. “Yes.”
My fingers tremble as I slide it onto my hand, and the moment it settles against my skin, something inside me steadies. The small connection to my family brings a light I haven’t felt since the day they dragged me here.
“Good.” Dante’s tone snaps back to command as he cuts a look at Callum. “Hold her again. From this point on, we need to be the best actors of our lives if we want to get past the upper level and every guard that stands between us and the outside world.”
Callum moves instantly, his arm firm around me once more, but Dante’s gaze lingers on me. For once, the mask slips just enough for me to see the strain etched beneath.
“I apologize in advance,” he says, his lips tightening momentarily, “for how I’m going to have to act and what I’ll have to say about you.”
His eyes hold mine, dark and steady, waiting for acknowledgment.
My throat works around the ache that’s been lodged there since the moment I saw that vat, but my voice comes out steady and threaded with steel.
“There’s no words you could say,” I tell him slowly, “that will come close to hurting the way I’ve already been hurt here.”
Dante’s jaw ticks, a muscle pulling tight in his cheek, but he doesn’t look away. For a breath, it feels like he doesn’t see me as just the captive vampire, but as a survivor staring back at him instead.
Then he gives a single sharp nod, his cold mask snapping back into place. “Good. Then let’s move.”
The stairs stretch upward once again in a spiral of cold metal, each step groaning beneath their weight. Callum’s arms stay locked around me, every jolt of motion rattling through my body. Elias’s steady tread follows close behind, the three of them moving like parts of a machine with me locked in the center as we emerge into the last remaining level between us and freedom for me to use the ring.
My lashes stay pressed tightly closed now, feigning complete unconsciousness to draw the least amount of attention from guards. I let my head loll against Callum’s chest, my arms limp, but the act has me completely on edge. I can’t see anything, leaving me at a severe disadvantage to react and protect myself.
I’m forced to trust the men surrounding me, a plight that is nearly impossible.
Boots squeak in the near distance, and a voice, sharp and suspicious, asks, “What’s this?”
The movement shifts as Dante strides ahead of us, his voice low, cold, dangerous. “These orders from above are not within your paygrade to know, Tim.”
A pause and the guard’s tone sharpens. “We should have been noti–”
The sickening crunch of bone snapping cuts the words off, the sound one I’ve heard many times during training. Someone’s nose just got crushed.
“You think you get to question me?” Dante spits, his voice so venomous it sends a chill down my spine. “I’ll call my father down here myself if you want to push me one more goddamn time. But I promise you that if you bother him, you won’t have a tongue to ask that question again.”
Silence follows, heavy and suffocating as my heart beats erratically. The only sound that comes is the thud of boots retreating.
Dante’s voice whips out, “Does anyone else want to question whether I’d risk my life for a blood-sucking bitch?”
My stomach twists, bile rising at the venom in his tone, even though I know he warned me it would come. Even though I know it’s a bluff.
The silence that follows is absolute. No one answers. Not a breath, not a shuffle of boots.
“That’s what I fucking thought. Now move out of the way,” Dante spits, cold and final.
I hear the faint rustle of uniforms shifting, the squeaky hinge of a door being pulled open.
As Callum carries us forward, my head stays lolled against him, every muscle in me screaming to open my eyes and see.
A sharpbeeppierces the silence, followed by Callum stepping forward without hesitation. I heard Elias’s steady tread close behind and force myself to take small, steady breaths as I hear the mechanical groan of doors closing.
Please let this be the way up.
The floor lurches beneath us, the sudden upward pull jerking through our bodies. My head tips harder against Callum’s chest with the motion, and relief floods me so fiercely it almost cracks me open.
We’re ascending.
